Let Nothing You Dismay
by Signy1
Summary: Christmas in the barracks. Well, what can you say? There's certainly more than enough snow, and a whole forest of evergreens not that far away, and there's always a carol or two to be sung. But not everyone is feeling particularly merry.
1. Chapter 1

_'Twas the night before Christmas, and in the bar-rack,_

 _An RAF Corporal was blowing his stack…_

Well, the scansion limped, the rhyme was forced, and Newkirk was actually keeping a lid on his temper, if with a visible effort, but the sentiment wasn't entirely wrong, Hogan thought, muscling into the center of the discussion. Newkirk, with a tension that was all but palpable, was sitting cross-legged on the bench, mending a jacket that had seen better days, albeit so long ago that they were lost to memory. He was looking only at his needlework, his jaw clenched tight.

"Pierre, do not be such a spoilsport! _Pere Noel_ has brought us a beautiful turkey, and I shall cook a Christmas feast that will bring a smile even to your grim face. Get in the spirit!"

"Leave off, Louie," Newkirk said. "Cook anything you bloody well please. I'll eat in the mess 'all."

"Aw, come on, Newkirk! It's Christmas! We're all supposed to be jolly and everything," Carter said. "I know this isn't the greatest place in the world, but it… it's _Christmas!_ Like the song says, we've got to be merry and bright."

"Who's stopping you? Deck the 'alls to your 'eart's content. Just leave me out of it, or I'll deck you."

"Take it easy, Pete," Kinch reproved. "It's the holidays. Maybe your Christmas present to all of us could be a little less attitude."

"Tell you what. I'll do you one better," he snapped. "My presents will be my absence." He scooped up the jacket, stuffed it under his arm in a wad, and slammed his hand against the bunk. It opened.

Before he could descend into the tunnel, though, Olsen, the current doorwatcher, shouted, "Guard!"

Newkirk slapped the tunnel door closed, and threw himself onto the bunk as it lowered, a split second before the barracks door swung open, letting in a gust of cold air, a German guard, and a Kommandant. It was even money as to which was the least welcome.

"Achtung!" barked the guard, a youngster, who had _probably_ not lied about his age to enlist. He was a new broom; twitchy, quick to reach for his rifle and slow to decide what to do with it once he had it. The men came to attention readily enough; it wasn't worth bothering to do otherwise.

"Welcome to our humble abode, Kommandant," Hogan said easily. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

"I'm here to inform you that, as a Christmas gift on behalf of our beloved Fuhrer, all prisoners will be allotted an extra hour of electricity tonight, and the mess hall will be serving a special Christmas dinner."

"What, the cabbage will be red, and the bread will be green, is that it? We already live in a ruddy stable."

Klink, who did not appreciate being mocked when he was being, so far as he was concerned, a veritable Fourth Magi, gave Newkirk a hard look. "Anyone who doesn't care to partake in the festivities is more than welcome to spend the holidays in the cooler," he warned.

Hogan cut in again before Newkirk could finish digging his own grave. "Of course not, Kommandant! I lack the words to say how grateful we are for your generosity."

The look on Newkirk's face suggested that he was suffering from no such lack of suitable vocabulary, and, moreover, that the cooler would be a small price to pay for airing it. Hogan pasted on a wider smile. "Will you be joining us for the feast, Kommandant?"

Klink's face screwed up in distaste; one might have suspected that Newkirk's evaluation of Klink's likely menu might not have been all that far off the mark. "Me? Eat that revolti— Colonel Hogan, I don't think that fraternizing with the prisoners would be at all fitting for a German officer." He tucked his riding crop more securely under his arm. "That will be all." With a disdainful snort and an attempt at hauteur that had probably looked a lot more imposing when he'd been practicing it in front of the bathroom mirror, he swept out of the barracks. It would have been nice if he had tripped over the threshold while doing so, but real life is rarely as well timed as that, and a crying shame, too, thought Hogan.

"Sounds positively scrumptious," Kinch said dryly. "O Come, All Ye Famished."

"Good King Wenceslaus looked out; On the feast of Stephen," sang Olsen. "Saw the kriegies 'round about; In the latrines heaving!"

"Well, the extra hour of electricity will be nice," Carter said. "We can have our _real_ Christmas dinner after we finish laughing at whatever Klink serves up."

"What these Boche do to perfectly good food is no laughing matter," LeBeau said. "It is a sin and a crime."

"On the first day of Christmas, the Jerries gave to me; A bad case of dysenter-eeee," offered Mills.

Olsen laughed. "Ooh. Yeah, that's better than mine. Okay. Er, On the second day of Christmas, the Jerries gave to me, Two sniper towers, and a bad case of dysenter-eeee!"

"On the third day of Christmas—"

There was a distinct possibility, Hogan thought, that several of the men were not only full of Christmas spirit, but Christmas spirits. He didn't have the strength to go looking for the proof, but he wished they'd put a cork in it. Rimshot, please.

"Anyway," he said loudly, trying to bring things back to some sort of order. "We've got to be good little prisoners and make at least a token appearance at Klink's little shindig. And nobody mention the turkey, or we'll have Schultz in here trying to cadge a drumstick."

"Huh! We probably will anyway," LeBeau scoffed. "That man can smell food before it is cooked."

"Aw, there are a lot of foods you can smell before they're cooked," Carter objected. "We always knew if my mom was making her famous lamb stew, because the first step was chopping up all these onions, and it made the whole house smell like—"

"Thank you, Carter," said LeBeau dryly. "I would never have thought of that."

"…Six goons a-guarding, FIIIIVVE MON-O-CLES! Four cooler cells, three roll calls, two sniper towers, and a bad case of dysentery! On the seventh day of Christmas—"

Newkirk, who looked to be about half a chorus away from giving the carolers a knuckle sandwich in lieu of a figgy pudding, had returned to his jacket, stabbing the needle violently into the fabric and pulling the thread a great deal tighter than was strictly necessary.

"God bless us, every one," Hogan muttered to himself. "I think we're gonna need it."

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: I've spared you at least some of the terrible Christmas carol parodies that kept occurring to me. This is not to say that, for instance, some of the men might or might not be humming 'O Ticking-Bomb' at some later date. Or, perhaps, 'O Little Town of Hammelberg, We've Blown Your Bridge Sky-High.' The possibilities, for a sufficiently twisted mind, are more or less endless. Most of the carols I referenced are traditional, but Carter is quoting 'White Christmas,' (May your days be merry and bright,) a popular song from 1942. The men are shown as possessing a couple of ordinary transistor radios in addition to Kinch's setup, and I took the liberty of assuming that, on occasion, they listened to lighter fare than war news on the BBC.


	2. Chapter 2

Klink's vaunted Christmas dinner, courtesy of the Fuhrer himself, was just about what one might have expected. And received precisely the respect and appreciation that it deserved. Mind you, there were sprigs of holly festively shoved into the mashed potatoes. What more could a man ask?

"Hark, the hungry Allies sing, 'Oh, good grief, what is this thing?'" Mills was still in fine fettle, tapping out the beat with his fork against the rim of his tin plate.

Houlihan—or, rather, whoever was being 'Houlihan' this week; LeBeau didn't actually remember his real name and wasn't about to ask—took up the challenge. "Peas on toast, and turnips boiled; Bread that's stale, and milk that's spoiled."

"Cabbage slop and spam surprii-iise; One by one our gorges rii-iise," Olsen couldn't quite hit the high notes; that didn't stop him from trying. "Eeeeven Germans must admit; Their cuisiiiine all tastes like—"

"All right, pipe down," Hogan said mildly. He couldn't really argue with the sentiment, but he'd always held to the musical rule that one should _hit_ the notes, not bludgeon them to death in a dark alley. Besides, the guards were beginning to look cranky.

"Ach! It is not nice what they were singing," Schultz said. "It was _true_ , but it was not nice."

"Neither is this meal," LeBeau said. "Christmas dinner should not feel like the Last Supper."

"Cockroach…! That is a terrible thing to say," Schultz said, more in sorrow than in anger. "Remember what day this is. We should all be nice. Newkirk is not complaining, see?" He blinked, as the undeniable oddness of that fact struck him. "Why are you not complaining, Newkirk?"

"Me complain, Schultzie? The very thought. Why, this brings back precious memories of Christmas dinners when I was a lad." He paused to examine an unidentifiable beige forkful from all angles. None of them were flattering. "I used to leave the table 'ungry _then_ , too."

Schultz scowled. "Jolly jokers." He lumbered away, with visions of French cuisine dancing in his head. LeBeau had not said that he was _not_ preparing a less dismal meal, later. Obviously, it would be his bounden duty, as a conscientious guard, to go to the barracks and be sure that all was in order. After all, cooking in the barracks was against the rules, and it would be very bad if one of the less… amiable… guards found out about it.

The men settled back down to their meal with no more than the usual chaos. Newkirk, for a change, was not contributing to said chaos; he was keeping his head down, concentrating only on his rapidly emptying tray. LeBeau frowned; he had not liked that comment about leaving the table hungry on Christmas. Was _that_ the problem? Dark memories? Just what had Christmas in Stepney entailed?

"Boy, Newkirk, you were just kidding, right? You didn't really have this stuff for Christmas at home, did you?" One could always count on Carter to jump head-first into the nearest cesspool, LeBeau thought. For once, he was grateful.

"You daft, Andrew?" asked Newkirk, briefly and scathingly. Not actually answering the question, Hogan noted, but it did effectively end that line of conversation. He finished off the beige stuff and moved on to a gray slab of something that was probably either fried liver or an asbestos shingle. It was difficult to tell.

The jollier end of the table was starting to get rowdy again; ersatz-Houlihan and Olsen were tossing peas into the air and catching them in their mouths, or occasionally other prisoners' mouths, Mills was trying to come up with a workable chorus for 'We Three Klinks,' and Boucher was re-enacting the dance of the bread rolls, a la Charlie Chaplin, who, on a strictly professional level, didn't have much to worry about. As the rolls segued from dancing to goosestepping down the table, to the amusement of Boucher if not the guards, Hogan thought to himself that it was definitely time to get out of here. Preferably before anyone's table manners devolved any further, if such a thing was even possible.

Apparently the Germans agreed. "Dinner was sehr gut, but now it is time to go back to your rooms and go to bed. And Frohliche Weihnachten," Schultz added. "I used to tell mein kinder that the Christkindl could not come while they were awake. So back to the barracks, and be good little prisoners."

"So if we're good and go right to sleep, Santa Claus just might fill up our stockings, right, Schultz?" Olsen mocked.

"Ooh, yeah! Whaddya think he'll bring us, Schultzie?" asked Mills.

"How about a tunnel?" wisecracked Baker.

"Aw, that's what he brought us _last_ year!"

"I do not wish to hear this, and I do not wish the Big Shot to hear this, and I do not wish you to say such things!" Schultz was getting redder by the moment. "You will all go back to the barracks, _quietly_ , or I will have to report all of you! Back, back, back!"

"Down in the stalag, what the hell? Schultzie's yelling, 'Raus, macht schnell!'" chanted Mills. "Back to the barracks, quick, quick, quick; And hope that the goons don't shoot Saint Nick!"

Newkirk shot Mills one of his trademark Looks; the one that asked, wordlessly but unmistakably, how the recipient of said Look managed to tie his own shoes in the morning, whether being so inutterably stupid was actually painful, and, most of all, why he, Newkirk, was being forced to endure any of this. Mills didn't notice, but then his self-preservation instinct had thrown in the towel somewhere around the third cup of ersatz eggnog. Lovely stuff, that; compounded from a little powdered egg, a little powdered milk, a little sugar, and a whole lot of Barracks Eight's special Home Brew, which was almost never _entirely_ lethal.

Schultz made a frustrated noise, somewhere between a car engine revving up and a teakettle boiling over. "That is enough! No more singing, no more talking, no more anything! Raus!"

"Okay, fellows; you heard the man! I'm surprised at you," said Hogan. "For shame! Giving Schultz a hard time, on _this_ of all nights. Christmastime should be about comfort and joy. Treating even your enemies like brothers….oops, sorry Schultz. No offense."

Schultz shrugged. "None taken. You have not _met_ my brothers," he said dryly.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: The bread roll dance sequence is an iconic scene from the 1925 Chaplin film 'The Gold Rush.' It's exactly what it says on the tin; he sticks his forks into two rolls, and makes them dance. If you've never seen the film, I highly recommend you check it out. It's pure, masterful, graceful, straight-faced humor, random and silly and perfect.

And as for Olsen's little comment about German cuisine, any opinions expressed by the characters are strictly their own, and I do not necessarily agree with any of them. In this case, while I don't doubt that prison food is dreadful, regular, civilian German food is very much the contrary. And Newkirk wants me to assure you that his mother was a right wizard in the kitchen, and never, ever produced anything even remotely like whatever that beige stuff was.


	3. Chapter 3

Once they got back into the barracks, things slowly began settling down. Hogan buried himself in a somewhat tattered copy of _A Tale of Two Cities._ Newkirk went back to his sewing. Carter rummaged a length of yarn from the capacious depths of his jacket pocket, and wound himself a cat's cradle. LeBeau fussed over his marinating turkey, which—who knows?—might even have appreciated the attention. Even the singers ran out of either energy or inspiration, and began towards their bunks and whatever time-wasting activities they preferred. It wasn't as though they hadn't all had plenty of chances to practice killing time.

The tunnel entrance swung open; up popped Kinch. "Colonel Hogan?" he called. "Colonel, I think you need to see this."

There's something very ominous about that sort of declaration. The things that a person 'needs to see' are pretty much never the things a person _wants_ to see, and sometimes they're even the things they desperately fear seeing. As unwelcome conversation-openers go, in point of fact, 'I think you need to see this' is right up there with 'We need to talk' and, the all-time favorite, the quiet 'Uh-oh.'

Hogan took a breath, and almost automatically let his expression slide into the cocky, everything's-under-control mask he'd spent more than a year wearing more or less constantly. He was fairly sure that his men either hadn't quite figured out that he was making the whole thing up on the fly or were willing to pretend that they hadn't, and he did his best not to try to guess which it was. "Sure thing, Kinch," he said pleasantly. "Let's go see what's what."

Twenty very quiet, very tense minutes later, they still hadn't come back. LeBeau had given up pretending that he was doing anything more productive than staring at his bird as though expecting it to fly away and walked over towards the table.

"What do you suppose is happening?" he asked.

"Two possibilities spring to mind. Either we've won the war or we're all about to be rounded up and shot," said Newkirk, not looking up from his work.

Carter's eyes widened. "Boy, I sure hope it's the first one, not the second."

Newkirk didn't even bother rolling his eyes.

The trap door opened again, and Hogan climbed up the ladder. "Well, I've got some good news and some bad news," he said breezily.

"What's the bad news?" Carter asked. "Tell us that first, and then tell us the good news to cheer us up."

"Fair enough. The bad news is, there's trouble," Hogan said. "London's scrubbing the mission. Some last-minute intelligence came through; seems the train we were supposed to bomb was a decoy. A trap. Someone's been feeding the Underground phony information, and it's going to take a few days to sort out the good intelligence from the fishy stuff. Everything's on hold until they've gotten themselves squared away."

They let that sink in for a moment. They'd come within a whisker of walking straight into a firing squad, via a Gestapo interrogation room. It was a miracle they'd gotten the word in time. A genuine Christmas miracle.

"The good news is that we won't have to rush our Christmas dinner," Hogan finished as cheerfully as he could. "And Newkirk, that rush job on the civvies is hereby cancelled. Take a break. We're all going to be playing possum for a couple of days."

"A few _days_? We're just going to sit 'ere on our arses for _days_?" Newkirk clenched his fists, crumpling the jacket. "We can't just… bloody 'ell, there's got to be something we can do!"

"We're already doing it. We're decking the halls, jingling our bells, and harking the herald angels like the only things on our minds are eggnog and sugarplums. We're not going to do a single thing that would attract attention until we get the word that we can get back to work."

"But Colonel—!"

"I want those stockings hung by the chimney with care! Pronto! And that's an order!" Hogan paced the length of the table. "Look, fellows, London is positive that the leak was strictly one way. Nothing to worry about on our end; we're as safe as we ever are. We're just taking the holiday weekend off, is all."

"Just as well, _mon Colonel_ ," LeBeau said valiantly. "After you have all tasted my _Buche de Noel_ , my Christmas cake, you will not wish to hurry away from the table in any case."

Carter threw himself into the breach, as well. "It'll sure be nice to have a few days off. Hey, how about this? We can blow up that train on New Year's Eve, instead! Boy! We'll count down to midnight, see, and it'll be just like fireworks."

"Let's hope so," Hogan said. "Just remember everyone—act natural. No funny business. Or rather, no more than usual; I'm not asking anything crazy like being polite and cooperative at roll call. We'll be back in business before you know it."

"You've got it, sir," agreed Kinch. "We can do that, no problem."

"Great," said Hogan, and turned to head back to his office, scooping up his book along the way. "Thanks, everyone. And to all a good night."

Newkirk forced his hands to unclench, glared at the abused jacket for a moment, then pulled his pencil sharpener from beneath his collar and used it to slice through a half-finished seam, pulling the sleeve free from the body with one quick jerk. "Charming," he muttered under his breath as he rethreaded a needle to start over. "Just bloody charming."

"Gee, what'd you do that for?" Carter asked. "You were almost finished!"

"Wasn't set right," Newkirk said smoothly. "Can't go around with crooked sleeves, can we?"

It might have been true; he was an exacting, persnickety tailor, and doggedly redoing stitchery that had looked perfectly fine to the others was not unheard of in the Stalag 13 atelier. (He had a strict rule, which he had imposed on all other needleworkers under his direction, to the effect that the wrong side of the seam had to look just as neat as the right side. He swore that it made all the difference in the finished piece. The other tailors mostly just swore.) So the Jack-the-Seam-Ripper routine _might_ have been perfectly innocent. On the other hand, it might… not. Carter didn't know which; he suspected that Newkirk might not have known, either.

"Really?" he probed. "It looked okay from here."

"So speaks Stalag 13's very own fashion plate," Newkirk snarled at him. "Would _you_ like to be the one parading about 'Ammelberg in a coat what looks like something the cat wouldn't bother dragging in? You think the Krauts aren't on the lookout for escaped kriegies wearing coats pieced out of old blankets and parachute silk? You want someone to get shot because I couldn't be arsed to do the job right? Even if _you_ do, _I_ don't!"

"Whoa! Newkirk, slow down," Kinch said. "Carter was just asking a question. The whole war doesn't depend on one jacket sleeve."

"It might for the bloke wearing it," Newkirk snapped. "Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs, all right? I don't tell you 'ow to man the wireless, I don't tell Carter 'ow to make bombs, and I don't tell Louie 'ow to go about poisoning people."

"Poison!" LeBeau rose to the bait. " _You barbarian. One of these days, I'll show you poison—_ " Even as he fell into the well-worn rhythm of trading insults, he saw, just for a second, a flash of relief cross the other man's face. LeBeau had not spent all this time in a sabotage unit without learning how to recognize a diversion when he saw one. He changed his tack, sweetened his voice. "Ah, never mind, Pierre. You cannot make me angry on Christmas!"

Yes, there it was. Somewhere between disappointment and frustration. Newkirk scowled, and, deprived of one way to change the subject, rummaged in a pocket for his cigarettes. LeBeau frowned, but before he could say anything else, they all heard a voice.

The windows were closed, of course, but the rickety plywood didn't do much to keep out the weather, let alone sound. And apparently the guards were not immune to the magic of Christmas. Langenscheidt actually had a fairly good tenor, and Richter's baritone was better still. Schultz was not nearly as good as he obviously thought he was, but the effort was there. Who would have expected harmony from Nazis?

"Stille Nacht; Heilige Nacht! Alles schlaft—"

Newkirk's shoulders tensed as the slow, familiar melody wafted into the barracks, and his thread snapped under the sudden pressure.

Olsen took up the song. No more jokes, no more parodies; just the simple purity of the powerful words they'd all known from childhood. "—All is bright! Round yon Virgin—"

Kinch joined in; his warm, deep voice anchoring the carol, then Mills and Carter. Hogan opened his door, slipped back into the room, listening intently. After a moment, LeBeau sang, too. Newkirk did not. The wooden shutters swung open; Langenscheidt, still singing, peered into the barracks. The song filled the dismal hut; three languages and a single cry for peace, ally and enemy alike. In a twisted way, it was both beautiful and heartbreaking, hopeful and hopeless, in accord… and slightly off key. They sang the same song with the same emotions, more alike than unalike, and for a moment the gap between them was as slender as the wires in the fence. Which only made the barbs feel that much sharper.

Langenscheidt smiled, a bit wistfully, as the song came to a plaintive close. "Frohliche Weihnachten, Colonel Hogan," he said quietly. "To all of you."

"Merry Christmas, Corporal Langenscheidt," Hogan replied. No one else said anything for a moment, and no one moved to close the shutters, despite the icy wind.

"It… it will be lights-out in an hour," Langenscheidt said, obviously not sure where he wanted this conversation to go and falling back on generalities.

"Yes, we know," Hogan said. "We'll be sound asleep, I promise. No digging tunnels tonight."

Awkwardly, the young corporal managed a smile, then gently shut the window and resumed his patrol.

"I can't bear this," Newkirk told nobody in particular, and stood up. Baker was sitting on the bunk-slash-tunnel entrance. "Budge up," he said, not unkindly, and slapped the switch to activate the pulley approximately three eighths of a second after Baker had scrambled to his feet. Another two eighths of a second after that, he was at the bottom of the ladder and stalking down the tunnel.

Hogan's brows knit. This was not exactly what he had intended by 'act normal.' Granted, a certain amount of irritability and outright crankiness were well within the bounds of normal Newkirkly behavior, but given their current precarious situation, deliberately adding to the tension and strain of the barracks was not. When the chips were down, Newkirk invariably rose to the occasion. Therefore, either something was distinctly wrong, in which case it needed handling, or he was being unwontedly nasty for no real reason, which looped right back around to something being distinctly wrong.

Santa's reindeer, it seemed, had left in their wake a whole pile of something that sure as hell wasn't gingerbread, and Hogan had stepped into it up to his waist. Ho ho ho indeed.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: Newkirk's cardinal rule of tailoring was actually passed on to me from my grandfather, who learned it from his mother, and I do actually abide by it. Sewing and/or embroidery must look just as good on the back as it does on the front. End of story. This does occasionally mean unpicking and resewing a piece two or three or six times, but such is life. As the saying goes, the devil's in the details… but as the other saying goes, so is God.

The multilingual rendition of 'Silent Night' is, of course, a reference to the 1917 Christmas Truce, where enemies did spend a few hours singing carols and playing games; different languages, same song, and same beliefs. Not necessarily religious beliefs. But the longing for peace, for home and family and a life without a gun in one's hand… how could that _not_ resonate with both sides of the war?


	4. Chapter 4

Hogan sighed, then opened the trap door again. He looked back at the men, who had been watching the drama with, variously, vague interest, outright dismay, and everything in between. "All right, everyone, remember what I said. Ding dong merrily on high, and that's an order!"

With that, he swung himself over the bedframe and down the tunnel. Ah, the joys of command. He wasn't the least bit surprised when he heard the pitter patter of three pairs of not-so-tiny feet on the ladder behind him. His men were only human, and they all lived in a very confined space, in fairly appalling conditions, and under incredible, unrelenting pressure. They easily could, and often did, get on one another's nerves.

But the moment that one of them needed it, he would have a phalanx standing at his shoulder to back him to the hilt. Every single time. Even—hell, _especially_ – if he was pretending that he didn't need one.

Newkirk was in the radio shack. The mangled jacket was dangling forlornly from the ladder to the tunnel exit like a limp dishrag; the torn sleeve was on the floor. For once, he wasn't smoking. His cards were nowhere in sight. He wasn't doing anything at all, in fact; he was sitting, stock-still, with his head in his hands, staring at the rough planks that made up the table.

Hogan took a breath. He'd seen that stillness before, and it was never, ever good. "Newkirk. Talk. Now."

"Sir?"

"Let's not play games, Newkirk. What the hell is going on?"

"I came down 'ere for a bit of privacy, is all," Newkirk said. "You said yourself that there's no rush on the mufti. I'm taking a break. As ordered. Sir."

"Uh-huh. Right. Your obedience is just amazing." Hogan crossed his arms. "And my other orders? Did you forget about those?"

"Sorry, sir," Newkirk said. "Trying to act as normal as possible, sir."

"Making a scene and bringing everyone down on Christmas Eve is normal, huh? What's with you tonight?"

Newkirk stared woodenly ahead. "I'm sorry, sir. No disrespect intended."

"This isn't about disrespect! What's the problem? Why are you going to so much trouble to make everyone else miserable?"

Newkirk twitched faintly. "I'm not… that is, I came down 'ere so I _wouldn't_ put the wind up anyone else, sir."

"Is this about the mission?" Hogan probed. "Is it the leak that's got you so tied up in knots?"

"No, sir. Like you said; we're as safe as we ever are. I'm not worrying about that."

"All right, then; what is it? Was it the caroling?" Hogan was trying to remember the precise order of the evening; how long had Newkirk been off-color? When and why had this happened?

"The lads can sing anything they like, for all of me," Newkirk said, almost convincingly enough. "I didn't care to join in, is all."

"Sure. Look, Newkirk, I know this isn't where anyone wanted to spend the holiday," Hogan said, fairly sure that he was on the right track at last. "I know it's not easy. But you've got to make an effort, here. Even without this whole mess with London, morale was always going to be a little iffy over Christmas. You're not making this easier on anyone, and I need you to get your head in the game. I'm counting on you!"

"Colonel 'Ogan… I'm not sure I can," Newkirk admitted. "I just don't know that I 'ave it in me. I'll stay down 'ere and not bother anyone, or if you've got a job I'll go do it, but I can't go back up there and play like everything is all right. I'm sorry, sir. I can't."

"No, you can't, can you?" Hogan said slowly. "Fair enough. But why not? Newkirk… this isn't like you. What's eating you? Why can't you pull it together tonight?"

"I'll lie to the Krauts with my 'and on a Bible, Colonel, you know that. I'll lie to the rest of the lads if it's for the greater good. But I'm not going to lie to you, sir. You or the others. Even if I tried, I don't think I could make it convincing. Not tonight."

"Why not? What is wrong?" Quietly, the other three men had entered the room somewhere in the middle of that, and LeBeau couldn't stay still another moment. " _Mon ami_ , what is it?"

"It's none of your business, is what it is," Newkirk said. His eyes were darting about, looking for an exit that they all knew wasn't there, with the controlled desperation of a cornered animal. "What are you on about? I'm _fine_."

"Aw, gee, Newkirk—you haven't been 'fine' all day," Carter said. "You just said yourself that—"

"I know what I said! It… it doesn't concern you. And it isn't affecting my work, either. So it's nothing to do with any of you, and no one else needs to worry. Leave off."

"Like that's going to happen. Come on, Pete," said Kinch. "Who do you think you're kidding?"

"He's right, Newkirk," Hogan said. "Whatever you may think, you're already affecting everyone. Might as well spill it. Don't make me make that an order, because if I have to, I will. Talk."

"…All right. All _right._ You lot want to know why I'm not feeling especially jolly? You really want to know? It's my anniversary, okay? As of today, it's four long, awful years I've been in 'ere, and at the rate things are going, it could be forty more after this. Satisfied?"

Hogan looked taken aback. "No, it isn't," he said slowly. "I've seen your file. You were shot down in November."

"November eighteenth, to be exact," Newkirk said. "But they didn't bring me 'ere straightaway, now did they? First it was a few weeks at the Dulag, where they did everything they could think of to try and get information out of me. Which they didn't get, not that I 'ad much to tell in the first place. And once any information I might've 'ad was too out of date to be of any interest to them, they did it all a second time, just for the fun of it."

Carter tried. He really did. "Boy, that's awful," he sympathized. "The Geneva Convention—"

"Didn't matter to them. Why would it? You 'ave to understand," he said, impatiently. "It was 1939. Far as anyone could see, the Krauts were _invincible_. We were losing on all fronts, and everybody knew it. We were prisoners… and, in six months when the war came to its inevitable end, we were going to be slaves. And everybody knew that, too."

No one said anything.

"They were so damned sure that they would never be called to account for anything they did. Ever." Newkirk's mouth twisted. "So they didn't need to worry about the Geneva Convention. And they didn't."

Hogan met his eyes. "Okay. And then what?"

"And then they took all of us what were still lively enough to fog a mirror, chained us up, threw us in the back of a truck, and we rolled into Stalag 13. It was Christmas Eve, and cold as charity," Newkirk said. "Christmas. I'd long since lost track of the days. But you can just bet that they made sure to remind us. The Kommandant then—Louie, you remember that bastard Muller, right? 'E just smiled at us, smiled like it was all just the funniest thing 'e'd ever seen, said 'Frohliche Weihnachten, Englanders,' and made some jokes about Saint Nick coming early this year, and that we must've been very bad boys indeed. I can still remember watching 'im caress that little whip 'e liked to carry around and thinking, 'well, that's not _my_ idea of a Christmas cracker.'"

"You were brought here on Christmas?" LeBeau stared at him. "You never told me that."

"Well, now you know," Newkirk said. "Look, I'm not trying to be the death's 'ead at the feast. It's nothing to do with you, anyhow. Go on, wassail yourselves silly, and God rest ye merry gentlemen. Just leave me alone, all right? That's all I'm asking. Colonel, even if we are laying low, isn't there _anything_ you'd like done? Aren't there any papers to forge? Messages to pass to the Underground? Shall I dig a tunnel to somewhere? _Anything?_ "

"I'm afraid not," Hogan said. "Everyone seems to be taking the holiday weekend off. Newkirk, hiding down here isn't going to change anything. It'll still be Christmas, and you'll still be dealing with all those rotten memories."

"And I deal with them just fine. I'm not ' _iding_ , sir. I'd just rather stay busy and not wallow. Is skiving off a ruddy dinner party really such a crime as all that?"

"It's not a crime at all. But you shouldn't be alone with this. We can't help you if you won't let us."

"I never asked you to! I don't need any 'elp! All I want to know is whether it would irreparably damage the war effort if I refrained from sitting in the barracks with the lot of you, wearing a paper 'at and singing carols to celebrate the day _my life bloody well ended?_ "

There was a horrible silence, which oozed into every crevice of the bunker and spawned a clutch of new silences.

Hogan cleared his throat. "You're trained on the radio. London's still mopping up their leaks, and the Underground will be keeping pretty low to the ground, so I doubt there will be anything coming in, but someone has to monitor it, just in case. If you take a few extra watches down here, Kinch could have Christmas off."

Kinch, who, as a general rule, reacted to someone else manning his radio with all the pleasure and confidence of an overprotective father watching his daughter go on her first date, nodded acquiescence. "I'd appreciate that," he said. "To tell you the truth, I wasn't too happy about the idea of missing Christmas dinner."

"Good, then," Newkirk said, after a moment. "That settles that."

"I guess it does," Hogan said, and turned to go, shooing the other men back up the tunnel and away from the small puddle of light and the silent radio.

A very subdued, "Thanks, Guv," wound its way to his ear. Somehow, it didn't make him feel any better.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: We do actually see Newkirk manning the radio in at least a couple of episodes. Not just the walkie-talkies; the whole set-up. As regards the early days of the war, well, it is a fact that the Nazis were doing rather well for a while, there. I'm no expert, and I don't know what conditions would really have been like for their POWs, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that they would have been at least somewhat unpleasant. Perhaps especially so for a man with a sharp tongue and a short temper.


	5. Chapter 5

Bed check, as a general rule, was at oh-two hundred hours. Long enough after official lights-out that everyone either was or ought to have been sound asleep, and could therefore be awakened as rudely as possible, and not quite long enough before reveille that they would feel fully rested after the interruption. Nazi efficiency at its finest. Most, if not all, of the men had decided opinions about being jerked from dreamland by a flashlight beam aimed two inches from one's nose, few of them friendly. Some dealt with the annoyance by entertaining elaborate revenge fantasies regarding very non-traditional uses of the heavy flashlights. Others simply learned to sleep through the intrusion, although at least one man complained that a very promising dream involving himself, Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, Ingrid Bergman, and a chafing dish full of melted chocolate had been entirely spoiled by the sudden glare; apparently, the women had collectively decided that he should fix the faulty light fixture and had spent the rest of the dream criticizing his lack of skill as an electrician. Freud would probably have had a field day with that one.

But at any rate, oh-two hundred was usually the witching hour, and precisely fifteen minutes before that time, the bunk nearest the door acquired an occupant. Ten minutes after two, the night guard—Corporal Otto, this time, and heaven only knew what he had done to be saddled with this very unpopular job on Christmas Eve instead of being back in the guards' mess having a celebratory schnapps with the others—slipped in, counted them as quickly as he could, which was not terribly quickly, because he had already had more than one celebratory schnapps that evening, and got out.

Ten minutes after they were sure he was gone for the night, the bunk by the door was empty again and the trap door was sliding closed.

Reveille was the same story; when Schultz came lumbering into the barracks to wake them, Newkirk was nestled all snug in his bunk, blanket pulled to his chin and hair fetchingly tousled. One might almost have thought he'd been in it for more than six minutes. (Which he had, actually. Seven—almost eight minutes. At the very least.) And he was a perfect little angel during roll call, smiling faintly while Klink delivered a rambling speech that contradicted itself at least twice, and was gone again as soon as they had been dismissed.

Most of the men rallied well enough. After breakfast, Olsen rummaged in his footlocker for a moment, emerging with a full pack of cigarettes festively tied with a ribbon. "Merry Christmas, Spencer," he said, handing over the small present with a flourish. "From me to you."

Spencer grinned. "Thanks, Olsen," he said, clapping him on the back. "Merry Christmas to you, too!" He looked around the barracks. "Merry Christmas, Foxton," he said, handing him the pack. "Hope you like it."

Foxton wiped away an imaginary tear. "It's just what I always wanted, buddy. How did you guess?"

"Aw, nothing but the best for my good pal," Spencer said. "Merry Christmas!"

Foxton, with the appropriate solemnity, bestowed the Christmas cigarettes on Kinch, who gave them, with a heartfelt word or two, to Baker, who gave them to quasi-Houlihan, and so on around the circle. With each exchange, as the joke got sillier, the actual show of gifting became more and more elaborate, until LeBeau, carrying the cigarettes on a pillow like the ringbearer at a wedding, presented them to Olsen with a torrent of rapid, flowery French compliments and a bow.

They laughed quite a bit throughout the whole process—the idea of holding an actual gift exchange had seemed somewhat foolish, to say nothing of labor-intensive. What did they have to give one another, after all? Odds and ends from Red Cross packages? Stacks of counterfeit marks, or the trinkets they produced in the metal shop? Besides, there were fifteen men in the barracks, to say nothing of several hundred men in camp, and while giving gifts to only one's close friends seemed rude, to say nothing of a very short cut to some very hurt feelings, trying to give to everyone would have been flat out impossible. Olsen, aided and abetted by Spencer, had cooked up this ridiculous round-robin idea, and had gotten the okay from Hogan, some two days previous. Their unwritten rule—when in doubt, make a joke—was operating in full force, and, Olsen had reasoned, Christmas morning in prison was more in need of some humor than any other day in the year. It was working, too; especially when Olsen capped it off by opening the pack and distributing them to all the men; he had tied personalized gift tags to each individual cigarette.

Carter looked at the cylinder in his hand, though, as well as the one left forlornly in the crumpled packet, and frowned.

"Boy… I mean, Colonel," he said quietly. "Don't you think I could go on down and… you know… just keep him company, maybe?"

"No, Carter," said Hogan. "Give him his space." Newkirk, once one looked past the creative complaints and sour witticisms, didn't actually ask for much, and discussing a problem much more personal than their chronic lack of tea was a complete non-starter. If he wanted solitude badly enough that he was willing to publicly admit that he needed it, Hogan didn't quite dare risk seeing what would happen if it was refused. There was only so far you could push a man, and there was only so much it was fair to ask of him. War was never kind, but it did not follow that it was either necessary or wise to be needlessly cruel.

"But…"

Hogan put a hand on his shoulder. "Look, Carter, I understand where you're coming from. But if you go down there today and start trying to cheer him up, all that's going to happen is that someone will end up doing a lot of apologizing on Boxing Day. Don't start."

Carter looked rebellious, then sighed. "Yes, sir."

"He'll be all right, Carter. But for now, go give LeBeau a hand. I'm sure he could use a sous-chef."

LeBeau caught Hogan's glance, and nodded enthusiastically. " _Oui_ , I would very much appreciate some help, Andre. Will you peel these potatoes while I am icing the cake?" He smiled. "You can even lick the bowl afterwards, if you like."

Carter, who was by no means stupid, knew exactly what they were trying to do, but he allowed himself to be drawn into the preparations anyway. They were right, after all. Being busy helped. They were all, one way or another, trying to force themselves to be merry so that they could at least sort of forget all the things that made the holidays hard—like the fact that they weren't at home with their families. Like the fact that, even if they _had_ been home, there would still be a war on, which meant rationing and air raids and the constant threat of bad news hovering over every waking moment. Like all the people who were never going to be home for the holidays ever again.

And Carter did his dogged best not to think about any of those things, but that only left more room in his head to think about a beat-up Newkirk being dragged into a half-built camp all those years ago, and it was making him sick to his stomach.

LeBeau sat down across from Carter, and after one shrewd glance at his troubled face, began piping neat rosettes of frosting onto his cake. "I remember… when I was young, the whole family came to our home for Christmas, and the year I was six, I insisted that I would make cookies for the feast. All by myself, of course; I was positive that I needed no help, and that I knew exactly what I was doing."

"I smell a disaster coming," Kinch commented, and stole a fingerful of icing.

LeBeau slapped his hand away. "So did my grandmere. She stayed in the kitchen the entire time to make certain that I didn't burn the house down. What I did not realize until years later is that she also quietly switched the cookies that _I_ had made for a fresh batch. One that did not have bits of eggshell in the dough, as well as being half-raw and half-burnt, and Heaven only knows what else. She must have been up half the night to make them. Anyhow, she then served them to all the cousins on Christmas Eve, and told them what a fine baker I was, and how proud she was. And the week after New Year's, she began giving me lessons in cookery."

Carter smiled. "Boy, that sounds really nice."

"Ah, she was a wonderful woman. I miss her." LeBeau sighed. "What was your best Christmas memory, Andre?"

"Gee, I don't know," Carter said. "Every year the whole family would get together at my grandfather's place—the house would be about to burst at the seams!—and it was always great to see everyone. On Christmas Eve, we always made a big fire in the fireplace, and we'd write down everything good that had happened that year, and everything we wanted to do over the next year, and one by one, we'd throw them in the fire and let the smoke carry them up to heaven."

"We used to do the same thing with our letters to Santa," said Houlihan pro tem. He smiled wistfully. "The old boy always came through, too. Mind you, my mother always read our letters first. To check the spelling, she said."

"Makes sense. You wouldn't want Santa to think you'd been slacking off in school," said Spencer, with a laugh. "You used your best penmanship, and looked up any words you weren't sure about in the dictionary."

And the conversation wandered across several continents, hitting essentially the same notes each time—shiny new bicycles, mom's famous entrée/side dish/dessert, plots to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus when they were supposed to be asleep. The afternoon slipped past almost before they noticed it, and LeBeau's turkey was ready to serve long before anyone was tired of debating the age old question of whether stuffing should be cooked in the bird or on the side.

And if nobody missed the significance of LeBeau filling a plate with a succulent piece of perfectly cooked turkey, accompanied by a fluffy mound of potato and the most golden brown of the dinner rolls, then covering the dish and setting it aside before serving the rest of the men, no one said anything, either.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: I've always tended towards the 'stuffing on the side' variation of the dish. And before someone chimes in to explain why I'm wrong, and why even call it stuffing if it isn't stuffed into the bird, and so on and so forth, do understand that I've already heard every possible argument on the topic. As the old joke has it, to a certain extent, both ways are traditional. And the lively discussion on why the other person's way is wrong is the most traditional part of all.


	6. Chapter 6

If there is a Power that looks after the imprisoned and helpless, it was surely working overtime that afternoon. Whether it was due to LeBeau's efforts, their own willpower, or both, the men were happy for the space of that meal. And they left the table, in twos and threes, most of them headed for other barracks and other friends, feeling almost free.

Christmas, after all, is not the only holiday that takes place in late December. The winter solstice has been a time of celebration for most of human history, under as many names are there have been cultures, but all of those feasts and celebrations proclaim that Darkness can never prevail and the Light will return. Be it a star or candelabrum, a sun or a son, one way or another, light, metaphorical, physical, or both, will always overcome, no matter how unlikely that may seem when one is standing in the shadows.

Let it never be said that there isn't something magical about a day like that. Nazi Germany was a very, very dark place.

LeBeau, in the nearly empty room, looked at a stack of dirty plates and unscrubbed pots, and exercised a cook's privilege; he decided that they could wait, and if anyone wanted a clean dish for whatever reason, they could wash it themselves. The plate he had so carefully put aside was still warming on the back of the stove, he picked it up and glanced at Hogan with a question in his eyes.

Hogan nodded. "He's all yours, LeBeau."

"Since the day I arrived," LeBeau agreed, and, just for a moment, he was back in the cooler, so long ago, a seething ragout of rage and loss and fear. There had been no real reason for the stranger in the next cell to throw him a lifeline. He'd done it anyway.

"Be careful," Hogan said seriously. "Don't do anything you'll regret, okay?"

"I will be careful. I must _prevent_ something happening that I would very much regret," LeBeau said seriously.

Hogan managed not to wince. "If you can't, no one can."

LeBeau opened the tunnel entrance, climbing, one-handed, down the ladder with the ease of long practice. He strode down the corridor, balancing a well-filled plate, a bottle of wine, and a considerable load of apprehension. The dim glow of the radio niche, just ahead, was for the first time, more hostile than hopeful.

But he set his teeth and walked in. Newkirk was sitting at the silent radio, head propped on his hand, and eyes fixed on something far away.

The finished jacket hung, with the rest of their civilian wardrobe, from a slightly ramshackle garment rack. It no longer looked like a refugee from a ragbag; aside from a carefully authentic touch or two—a resewn button with a slightly different thread, a slight shininess on the collar betokening long wear—it would not have been out of place in a shop window. It was the sort of thing any free man would have leapt at the chance to wear.

"I have brought your dinner," LeBeau announced, plunking the dish onto the table.

"Appreciate the thought," Newkirk said, making no move to touch it. "But I'm still not in the mood for a celebration."

"Who's celebrating?" LeBeau said. "I bring dinner to Kinch when he is down here, I bring dinner to the Colonel when he is down here, I bring dinner to Baker when he is down here. Three hundred and sixty four days a year, I bring dinner to whoever is down here manning the radio. You are down here on the three hundred and sixty fifth; I bring your dinner." He quirked a wry eyebrow, and produced two tin cups from his pocket. "And I also bring some of our horrible wine, which I am not cruel enough to make anyone drink alone."

Newkirk unbent enough to smile at that. "Now, then, Louie, don't try to fool a connoisseur. This is the batch from three weeks ago, isn't it? Wasn't 'alf bad."

"It wasn't half good, either," LeBeau said, pouring two cups full and pushing one across the table. "À ta santé."

Newkirk took it. "Cheers, mate." They drank. It really was atrocious stuff, even by the famously low standards of prison camp pruno. But somehow, the more of it one had, the better it started to taste. There was probably something very profound in that somewhere.

"Eat," LeBeau said. "Don't let it get cold; not even your poor stunted English sense of taste could possibly complain about this dinner. I outdid myself."

"And you're just so modest about it, too," Newkirk said, lifting the cover from the dish and smiling faintly at the mouth-watering aromas that swirled up to meet him. "I will say, it all looks smashing, Louie. Thanks."

As compliments from Newkirk went, that was about the equivalent of a three-star Michelin review, and LeBeau knew it. He wrapped his hands around his cup with a faint smile of his own, and said, "Letting it get cold will not improve it. Eat, before I give it to Schultz."

"I'm surprised 'e wasn't already in there begging for a taste," Newkirk commented, digging in.

"He was _. Le Colonel_ said that if I was going to feed strays, at least I'd had the sense to pick one that did not shed or mark the furniture."

"Not anymore, 'e don't, anyhow. We'd the devil of a time 'ousebreaking old Schultzie, as I recall."

"Ah, but what a splendid job we made of it," LeBeau said, and refilled their cups.

"Your life did not end, you know," LeBeau said quietly, about three-quarters of the bottle later.

Newkirk studied his empty plate for a moment, as if trying to read the future in the scattered bones. "That's where you're wrong, Louie," he said. "It ended. I'm not saying it didn't start up again, because it did. You were there when it 'appened. But the bloke I'd been up until that Christmas… 'e died, Louie. Stood there barefoot in the snow, with one working eye, five broken fingers, and a set of shackles so icy cold that they burned, and looked at the barbed wires penning 'im in, and 'e _died_." He was silent for a while, then, very softly, finished the thought. "It was a bloody long time before I stopped wanting to join 'im."

"I know," LeBeau said. "I knew then, as well. It was… it was frightening."

"Never meant to burden you with that," Newkirk said. "I'm sorry, mate. But I don't 'ave to remind you what it was like. The bullyboys, the beatings, and all the other little fun and games… I still think the only reason they kept me alive was that they knew 'ow badly I wanted someone to end it. But all the Christmas stuff…"

" _Oui_?"

"It just reminds me of standing there and realizing that they'd brought us to this place so that they could keep on doing all of it over again at their leisure. Forever, or next best thing. I was more scared that I'd 'ave to live than I was that I might die."

"How did I not know this before? This is not our first Christmas in this place," LeBeau asked.

"Why would you know? This is the first Christmas I wasn't otherwise occupied. I never needed to mention it before this, and if everyone 'adn't been so bent on converting Stalag 13's designated Ebenezer Scrooge, I wouldn't've mentioned it now."

"Otherwise occupied? With what?"

"Well, in 1940 I spent Christmas in the cooler. 1941 was the year I 'ad that nasty bug, spent 'alf of December and part of January curled around a 'oney bucket." He snorted. "I was too out of it to remember my own name, let alone the date. In '42 it was the cooler again. And that brings us to now."

"So it does. But we are a team, Pierre. This is what being a team is _about._ It was not right of you to carry this alone. I wish you had told me of this sooner."

"For what? So you could feel rotten, too, whenever you see mistletoe and 'olly branches? Like the Guv said, Christmas is something the lads look forward to. Even 'ere. Why would I take that away from any of you? Exactly what kind of a bastard do you think I am?"

"A stubborn one, for certain," LeBeau said, shaking his head.

"If not for that train we were supposed to be bombing, I'd've made it my business to draw another visit to the cooler, nice and quiet while you lot kept Christmas 'owever you liked, and then all this unpleasantness could've been avoided. If there was ever a time when me ending up in the cells for whatever reason would raise any eyebrows, that time is long gone. Next year I'll arrange for that; problem averted."

"Next year! _Non, mon ami_. This war cannot last much longer. It simply cannot."

"They've been telling me that for years, Louie. _Years_. I don't believe it anymore."

"You must not give up, Pierre! We have come too far for that."

"Who's giving up? I'll do everything I can, as 'ard as I can, for as long as I can, and a bit more after that, just for good measure. We'll win; I don't doubt that. We've got to. But predicting the whens and wherefores of it all? No. The war will end when it ends, and, mate, I'll be right 'ere when it does."

LeBeau bit his lip. "We are volunteers," he said softly.

"Damned right we are," Newkirk answered. "And, one way or the other, I'd be long gone if I didn't know that my job 'ere is probably the only worthwhile thing I'll ever do. I'm proud of it, proud of what we accomplish; never doubt that for a minute. It makes the shackles easier to bear... but they never quite vanish, do they?"

Unlike many of the questions that dotted his speech, that one was not rhetorical. He was genuinely asking a question of the only man who would or could give him an honest answer. LeBeau had been a prisoner for a long time, longer than almost anyone in camp besides Newkirk himself. LeBeau hated it there. Everyone hated it there. It was impossible to _not_ hate it there. But did it gnaw at him the way it obviously did at Newkirk, or was Newkirk the only weakling?

LeBeau took a moment to reflect, to reexamine feelings that he had long ago forced himself to relegate to the background of his life. "No," he said lowly. "No, they never do. But you must remember that this is not forever. Soon we will be free."

"Soon. Sure. From your mouth to God's ear. The empty promises, the platitudes… they only make me feel worse about the whole thing, Louie. They never 'elp none. I'm done with false 'ope. What I've got now is a task and a responsibility. It's better that way."

"No. It's not enough," LeBeau said. "It's _not_ better, and it's _not_ enough."

"It's more than I 'ad a few Christmases ago, mate. It's more than I thought I'd ever 'ave again. I'll take it." Leaning forward, he splashed a bit more plonk into their cups. "I've even got brothers now. That makes it more than enough. And that's all I've got to say on the subject. 'Ere's to a silent night."

LeBeau lifted his cup. "No. Here is to peace on earth, _mon pote_. Peace on earth, and good will to man."

"Now, _that_ I'll drink to," Newkirk said, with the ghost of a smile, and clinked his dented tin cup against LeBeau's. "Peace on earth, mate. And the sooner the better."

They made the same toast a year later.

In the same place.


	7. Chapter 7

December, 1950

Well, here he was again. Another Christmas, another cheerless room, another bottle of something that was either very bad wine or very good varnish remover. And another war.

He could sympathize with Kinch a lot more, now; trying to be a spy was hard at the best of times. Trying to be a spy in a country where nobody looked like you was damned near impossible. It was maddening. He'd picked up Korean fast enough, even the unfamiliar alphabet, but he was never going to blend in the way he had in Germany, and if there was anything less pleasant than feeling frustrated, feeling frustrated _and_ useless was surely it.

He flopped down at his desk and scowled at the stacks of papers. He'd mentally categorized them into 'bad news,' 'very bad news,' 'God, how did the Colonel do this without going crackers news,' and, let's not forget that perennial favorite, 'why don't you just hang me now and save us both some misery news.'

There _had_ been a 'good news' category, earlier this evening. He was currently drinking it.

And—of course there was—there was a pile of envelopes in his mail tray. The things he usually found in that tray also had a mental classification. It was the one he thought of as the 'there's probably a good reason I stayed in the service and I bloody well wish I knew what it is' stack.

He picked up the bottle, tossed back another swallow. It burned all the way down. Wretched stuff. It made the old Stalag 13 bathtub brew look good by comparison, a feat that really shouldn't have been possible. He put it back on the desk, shoved it to the side. Even the good news in this place was too dismal to bear. Unconsciously, he twined his hands together. His sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up well past his elbows, and his watch was already in the desk drawer, and had been all day. Most of the time, he didn't mind having something clasped around his wrist, but it was Christmas. 'Most of the time' didn't apply.

He flipped through the envelopes. Bad news, more bad news—ooh, new category; 'my superiors are ruddy lunatics news'—and… a letter with a Parisian postmark. He tore it open. There was only a single sheet of paper inside.

 _A toast, mon pote. Peace on earth. It_ _will_ _happen._

 _Louis_

He shook his head, a small smile flickering at the edge of his mouth. Good old LeBeau. How did he do it? How did he always know, even from halfway across the world, exactly how to make this nightmare of a holiday even slightly bearable? It had been, God, ten years since fate, in the guise of a very cross Kraut guard, had thrown them together. Saving his sanity, and almost certainly his life, in the process. Ten years. Where did the time _go_?

Well, on with the ritual. He poured a bit more alleged wine into his coffee mug, and held it up, gazing into the middle distance as though he could see Paris from this room somewhere in Korea. As though he could see the radio shack, deep in the bowels of Stalag 13. As though he could see a small man in a tattered red sweater sitting across from him. "To peace on earth, Louie. And soon, damn it all," he murmured. "Peace on earth and good will to man. And 'appy Christmas, mate. 'Appy Christmas..."

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: This story is part of my own personal head-canon, in which Newkirk stayed in the intelligence service after the war. Really, where else could he have exercised his various skills to their utmost in at least a quasi-legal sort of way? Although I imagine he'd have been a bit more useful in post-war Germany or Cold War USSR for the reasons outlined here. But the UK was involved in the Korean War, at least to some degree, and would therefore have been in need of a good intelligence agent. When only the best will do, the best is what you get.


End file.
